Religions have insights on new technologies; don’t you wonder what religions may have to say about climate engineering, and whether they would help us ask important questions about this topic? It goes way beyond “playing God” to questions of harmony, agency, and justice.

Forrest Clingerman, Associate Professor at Ohio Northern University (USA), is a specialist in how Christian thought engages environmental issues. He received his PhD from the University of Iowa. His scholarly works interrogate how religion and philosophy add to our understanding of such things as climate change, geoengineering, local ethics, and the meaning of place. He is co-editor of Theological and Ethical Perspectives on Climate Engineering (Lexington Books, 2016) and Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics (Fordham University Press, 2014).

Dr. Thomas Bruhn is a physicist working transdisciplinarily at the IASS Potsdam since 2012. He is leading the research group AMA (A Mindset for the Anthropocene) about the relevance of mental paradigms and specific qualities like mindfulness and compassion for sustainability. He also investigates co-creative processes in the realm of political decision making for coping with wicked problems. Earlier research work focused on more technological topics like climate engineering, CO2 utilization and self-organization at semiconductor nanomaterials. Thomas is a member of the German Chapter to the Club of Rome and the German Association of Scientists (VDW).

Prof. Dr. Mark Lawrence is Scientific Director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS). His primary areas of research are the impacts and mitigation of short-lived, climate-forcing pollutants (SLCPs), and on the potential impacts, uncertainties and risks of climate engineering.

He received his Ph.D. in 1996 in Earth and Atmospheric Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, (USA). His Ph.D. research was mainly conducted at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz.From 2000 until 2005, he led an independent junior research group at the MPIC, and in 2006 he took over the atmospheric modelling group at the MPIC. He received his Habilitation in 2006 at the University of Mainz, where he also served as interim professor for meteorology during 2009-2010, winning the 2010 annual Teaching Award from the State of Rheinland-Pfalz, as well as a University Teaching Award. In 2011 he moved to the IASS, and in 2014 he was appointed as an Honorary Professor at the University of Potsdam.

Prof. Lawrence is author or co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications. He co-coordinated the EU project “MEGAPOLI” (2008-2011) and coordinated the project “EuTRACE” (European Transdisciplinary Assessment of Climate Engineering, 2012-2014). He has served as editor for the journals Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, and Atmospheric Environment, and has served or serves on various international committees, most notably the Scientific Steering Committee of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry project (IGAC, for which he was co-chair from 2015-2018), the Science Team of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Clouds project (ABC), and the international Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (iCACGP), as well as being a contributing author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report.

Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest, is Executive Director of GreenFaith, an international interfaith environmental organization. He has developed a range of innovative programs to make GreenFaith a global leader in the religious-environmental movement.
In the past four years, he coordinated the 2015 OurVoices campaign, which mobilized religious support globally for COP 21, led organizing of faith communities for the People’s Climate Marches in NYC and Washington DC, helped lead the faith-based fossil fuel divestment movement, supported the launch of the global Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, and co-founded Shine, a faith-philanthropy-NGO campaign to end energy poverty with renewable energy by 2030. He helps lead GreenFaith’s new local organizing initiative, creating multi-faith GreenFaith Circles in local communities globally.
Fletcher accepted GreenFaith’s Many Faith’s, one Earth Award from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2009 and was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2011. He is the author of GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s People to Protect the Earth (Abingdon Press, March 2015).